Saturday, January 21, 2017

MWE's huge misrepresentations. Does it impact WCE?

I remember I wrote about MWE a year ago. For a company who would have an earlier valuation of its land at RM31 million and later to have the same land valued at RM155 million (5x multiple) on the same year, this is really serious. I did not know SC and Bursa can still allow this to happen although they have helped smaller shareholders to get MWE to ask for an alternative valuation.

In this episode, imagine your controlling and largest shareholder signed a deal to sell the land for RM55 million thinking that market value is RM31 million. And several months later another probably a more well known property valuer gave an entirely different view, i.e. the land is actually RM155 million. Is this because the management erred or is it really something else? Can we now trust valuer?

This is an article which appeared on The Edge Weekly 2 weeks ago where they published it online.

I would like to remind that the same MWE is a substantial (2nd largest) shareholder of WCE. If not because IJM is there, I would have had serious second thought on buying the company.

Another thing I would like to highlight is that the party MWE partners with is Pristine Primavera, a subsidiary of Newfields Group of Companies (a company which is related to Seow Lun Hoo).

Ironically, Newfields is one of the party which advised on the rights issue for WCE (formerly Keuro) - see below. Even if SC is to approve, there seems like a conflict of interest as Newfields advised on the dealings of WCE where MWE is a major shareholder, and later for Newfields to do a huge business deal with MWE.

Another very fishy deal involving MWE happened 13 months ago. Tan Sri Surin Upatkoon proposed to do a privatisation of MWE at RM1.70, only for him to do a U-turn a month later. See below. This is almost like playing around with shareholders and he does not care at all.

On another related matter, remember Mamee's shareholders who are the 3rd largest shareholder in WCE - see who advised them for the group's delisting back in 2011/2012. They are all potentially inter-related.

In these episodes, there are 2 things I would like to call: really questioning the 2 professional companies Cheston Internaional KL Sdn Bhd (the valuer for the land in PJ and Newfields Advisors Sdn Bhd, the advisor for the WCE, Mamee)

My gut tells me that the controlling shareholders are maintaining the price at this level and will attempt to privatise it just before the project is about to becompleted. Then, they will do an 'Ananda Krishna' or 'Vincent Tan' delisting and relisting scam .

My personal opinion. They will not do privatisation. There are reasons. At this stage, it is harder to do a Ananda Krishnan. But having said so, I have been wrong on WCE before.I sincerely think they wanted to use the warrants to raise their needed additional funds, but they later changed their minds.

IJM Corp is the best managed construction group in Malaysia. Good corporate governance that originated with the founders.

My view is that IJM is a professionally run company with no dominant shareholder or family. Hanky panky usually takes place more often than not in family controlled or where there is a dominant shareholder.

Disclaimer

The content here should serve as the opinion of the writer rather than as an advice to buy or sell. You should do your own research and/or seek expert's advice when doing your investments. Any decision that you made is your own and the author should not be held accountable.